Joint Systems Baseline Assessment 2006 Prepares for Operational Stage

US Joint Forces Command, SUFFOLK: US Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Systems Integration Command (JSIC) is preparing for the second phase of the Joint Systems Baseline Assessment 2006 (JSBA-06) to be held Sept. 5-28 at JSIC's labs and other sites linked in to the effort from around the world. 
 
The purpose of JSBA-06 is to identify and address warfighter interoperability issues relating to capabilities already in the field or projected to be in the field in the next year. Successful resolution of these issues will allow warfighters to more effectively use and share information. 
 
JSBA-06 kicked off in July with the two-week technical assessment, where warfighters, program managers, and engineers worked on evaluating more than 30 joint task force (JTF) command and control (C2) systems of record in a controlled environment. 
 
The second phase of JSBA-06 is the operational assessment. JSBA joins with National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's Exercise Empire Challenge in China Lake, Calif. and USJFCOM's Exercise Extended Awareness to integrate a large array of collection assets and C2 capabilities. These three concurrent events also gain operational fidelity via linkage to U.S. European Command's (EUCOM) Exercise Austere Challenge. 
 
Air Force Lt. Col. Jill Singleton, deputy director of interoperability demonstrations for JSIC and JSBA-06 project lead, explained what is in store for the operational assessment based on the technical one. 
 
“We identified several areas where we had data exchange issues. We fixed a couple of those in the technical assessment and the others are being worked by program managers and engineers prior to further testing in the ops assessment,” said Singleton. 
 
“We also discovered several complex issues that we will look into in more detail in the ops assessment,” she added. “We're not quite sure yet of the scope of the problem. We want to figure out if it's just procedural, just technical, or a little bit of both. Our goal is to identify a workable long-term solution or way ahead.” 
 
JSBA-06 includes program managers, engineers and participants from COCOMs, Joint Staff, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The combined events include sites around the globe and assets from the allied players conducting live collection at Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake, Calif. 
 
“The ops assessment includes collection assets, forces on the ground, live-fly (or non-simulated flying assets), and brings in more of our allied players. We also have eleven sites that are active worldwide, where in the tech assessment we had four,” said Singleton. 
 
“The robust communication network allows us to tie in allied imagery experts, who will be participating from their home countries as their assets fly over China Lake. This allows us to more fully leverage our allied capabilities and improve the timeliness of intelligence information. Our goal is to further network-enabled JTF operations by finding and fixing collection management and targeting issues in a coalition environment.”